TIERRA AMARILLA, Chile— Fifty miles from a rescue operation poised to extract 33 miners trapped deep underground, Emilio Gonzalez pondered the fate of a pair of townsmen who went down into the mine together in August.

"Nothing here ever changes," says Mr. Gonzalez, looking out over the soccer field where he had watched the two men play on the same amateur club. "But you have to wonder if anything will ever be like it was before for them."

Families of the 33 trapped Chilean miners often gather after nightfall when talk turns to stories of hope and love. Video courtesy of Reuters.

Around Saturday, rescuers at the site of the collapsed San José mine are expected to complete a 28-inch-shaft that extends a half-mile down to the chamber where the miners have taken refuge. After that, the men could be extracted in as few as three or as many as eight days, depending upon whether engineers deem it necessary to reinforce the shaft with steel casing, Mining Minister Laurence Golborne said. Then the plan is to use a specially designed capsule to extract, one at a time, men who have spent more than two months below.

Among them are Victor Zamora and Carlos Barrios Contreras—the first, a family man who has come to be called "The Poet," the other, a 27-year-old who friends characterize as a quick-tempered ladies' man. How these two, and the other 31 miners, will be changed by their ordeal is something friends and psychologists are grappling to understand.

In letters and verse passed to family above ground, Mr. Zamora has written of the agonizing days that passed after the mine's Aug. 5 cave-in, during which the men listened helplessly as probes sent by rescue drills above ground just missed finding them.

"One passed by, and another went halfway," Mr. Zamora wrote of the errant probes, in missives that gained him his nickname in the Chilean press. "Hear me God, I can't take it anymore."

Chile's Efforts to Rescue Miners

The Miners

When one drill finally broke through after 17 days, the miner who banged a steel bar against the drill bit as a signal that the trapped men were alive was Mr. Barrios, who as a baby was nicknamed "Kissing Bug," for an insect.

International attention, and a bounty of gifts, now await the miners. An eccentric Chilean millionaire has already handed $10,000 checks to each miner's family. A Greek company, Elmin Hellenic Mining Enterprises SA, is offering the 33 men all-expenses-paid trips to Athens. Among a host of other presents are iPods sent directly from Steve Jobs via Chile's president Sebastian Piñera.

But some of the men may also carry psychological baggage. Rodrigo Figueroa, a psychiatrist who heads the trauma unit of Chile's Catholic University and who was consulted on care of the miners and their families, says that typically 70% of catastrophe survivors come out essentially unchanged, 15% grow in the aftermath and 15% suffer long-term psychic scars.

Jaime Carvallo, a government psychologist who is working with the miners and their families, said he is fairly sanguine about the miners' prognosis, partly because the men were never abandoned by those above ground.

"Almost from the beginning, the miners could hear the drills coming for them," he said. That distinguishes the San José miners from other accident survivors, such as those who lived through a 1972 crash of a Uruguayan plane in the Andes. The Uruguayans heard demoralizing radio reports that rescuers had abandoned their search. To avoid starving, survivors eventually ate the flesh of dead companions.

For Mr. Zamora, the accident seems to have been a catalyst for him to explore a previously untapped gift for writing. "I was born again at 33 years," Mr. Zamora wrote in one of the scores of letters and poems he has sent through the pneumatic tube-like devices the miners use to communicate. "We are 33 miners and God is 33 years old. It's a coincidence, like a miracle, and for that, it gives me more strength to go forward."

The accident also seems to have strengthened Mr. Zamora's bond to his wife, Jessica, who recently wrote to inform him that she is pregnant. Mr. Zamora, in turn, surprised his wife on their wedding anniversary by arranging for a friend to send her flowers.

Family members describe Mr. Barrios as more freewheeling and headstrong than Mr. Zamora. A talented soccer player, he was ejected from two games just before the accident, once after a rough tackle and another time after he lowered his shorts in the direction of hecklers.

Mr. Barrios has a five-year-old son, but is unmarried and fond of the bachelor lifestyle, his relatives say. "He is a ladies' man," says his mother, Ruth Contreras. She says she would like to see her son marry, but that he has been corresponding with several women while underground.

Still, in some ways, Mr. Barrios seems to be re-evaluating his life, said his father, Antenor. He has begun taking an interest in religion and said he wants to pray with his family when he gets out, his father says.

Mrs. Contreras says her son is also trying to help the family finally heal the scars left by the death years before of two of Mr. Barrios's brothers, one as an infant and another as a teenager in a horseback accident. "The past is the past, mother," he wrote to her recently.

In Tierra Amarilla, Mr. Gonzalez, who formerly worked in the San José mine and says he lost a brother to an accident there in 2004, is crossing his fingers the rescue goes well. "I hope to see them playing ball here again very soon," he said.

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